


songbird

by jestbee



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, M/M, Pandemics, Post-Apocalypse, Smut, Strangers to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-09
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:15:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24091174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jestbee/pseuds/jestbee
Summary: a post-apocalyptic coffee shop au
Relationships: Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Comments: 11
Kudos: 112
Collections: Alittledizzy birthday fics 2020





	songbird

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dizzy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dizzy/gifts).



> Hey Mandy, 
> 
> Remember last year when everyone wrote you post apocalypse fics? Well, this is the one I started. I got about 2k in before I knew I'd been too ambitious and wouldn't be able to finish, but it was always destined for you so I waited until now to finish it. It hits a little different now, but I hope you still like it. 
> 
> Happy birthday! I hope you have a great day, and that you enjoy this fic.
> 
> Inspired by a post I saw about a converted bus, a video I watched on how to farm coffee beans, and how coffee shop AUs are good even when the world has fallen apart. 
> 
> **A note for all readers: warnings for mentions of a Flu that drastically impacted the ways of the world. I wrote it last year before all of this stuff, but I left it because I suppose we know more about what that looks like now. But, if that's troubling you right now I'd stay away.**

_It's amazing the difference_  
_a bit of sky can make_

* * *

In the interest of keeping things simple, they'd asked everyone what they'd done before. 

He'd hadn't done anything before. Not really. 

He served coffee to pretentious hipsters who complained about the beans, and tried not to leave his house more often than he had to. 

The irony has stopped feeling quite so surprising. 

He wakes after nightfall. His first task, as it is every night, is to pull on a heavy lever and open the door to his little space and let the cool air in around him, driving out the atmosphere that has gone stuffy and humid. 

He breathes in, thankful for a lungful of the outside. 

Next, after eating bread and cheese he keeps on the shelf under the roof, he sets out the mismatched chairs, the tables, and lights the fire. 

The water still runs, so that bit is simple enough, and he's amassed enough pots to set three of them boiling at once and to fill another to take with him. He has a feeling that after the scare with the wheat harvest last night, people might be on their way here, craving a well-earned respite. 

It doesn't surprise him that people still need a place to go, that within the collection of people that found their way here, to this island, there is still the urge, the need, to sit and sip something warm. People need to let their responsibilities slide away. Just for an hour or so. 

Dan is surprised, however, that he'd been appointed as the person to take care of that. Serving coffee from a giant silver machine before doesn't mean he's made for the more complicated process of doing it now, but he's giving it his best go.

Once the water is boiling, he goes to check on the crop. Planted in sections, his neat rows sway gently in the rich, dark soil.

The berries on the front most row and the one behind it are ready, shiny in the moonlight, waiting to be plucked. His first couple of tries hadn't gone so well, but he's had very few disasters in the last year.

He still processes them on the small scale, not wanting to make an industry out of it. He challenges himself with every set, getting beans from crop to cup as efficiently as he can without wasting resources. 

He picks the section near the front that's ready, strips them from the branches, being mindful to discard back onto the ground any of those that are green or over-ripe. They'll rot down, fertilize the remaining plants.

After, he drops those he thinks are useable into the large pot of water, and skims the floating berries from the top, discarding those too. Those are the ones that have already been fed on by insects and pests. 

The whole world is just trying to get by as best as it can these days, so Dan can't be too mad about those tiny lives that take food where they can find it. 

Once he has only the good berries left, he spreads them on the sheet fashioned from mismatched canvas, letting them roll out towards the edges.

He's kneeling down, thick wooden slab in his hand, when Rowan appears. 

"Alright, mate?" the young lad says, and drops down onto an upturned crate. 

"Hey," Dan says. 

"Harvest day?" 

"Just the first two rows," Dan says, "I'm gunna set these up to ferment, can you mind the front?" 

Rowan sighs, but he gets to his feet. Dan knows that he's probably silly to insist on someone being on-hand to pour coffee. Everyone knows where to find him if they need him, they could probably even pour the coffee themselves, but Dan likes to keep the illusion of what it was like before. 

It isn't just for the sake of those that come here, Dan likes the routine too.

Rowan is going through that gangly phase of his adolescence. He was only a child two years ago when he'd come here - and Dan isn't entirely clear on how that happened for Rowan - but now he's fourteen, and he needs something to do, so they'd sent him here. 

Dan is happy for the company, and for the extra pair of hands, but he's no better at talking to fourteen year olds now than when he was one. 

Dan pulps the berries with practised hands, shucking the brick-red outer casing from the beans within. He rolls the wooden block back and forth, applying as much force as he dare, until they are done. 

The pulp goes back with the compost, the white parchment covered beans go once again into the water. 

Another skim, to discard the ones he missed, and then he sets the pot aside to ferment. The moonlight shines on the rippled surface, the reflection of the bright white orb distorted as it settles. 

It's a cool light, and harsh, and not for the first time Dan wonders what colour the berries are without that filter. 

He never saw them before.

With the beans taken care of, Dan heads back out front. Rowan isn't there, but Dan can hear a loud clattering coming from inside.

He leans his head around the door to find Rowan inside his makeshift home, struggling with a heavy sack in the space where the front seat would have been.

"What are you doing?" Dan asks. 

"Um--" Rowan looks down at the bag in his hands and then back up at Dan, shrugging so that a few beans escape and scatter on to the floor. 

"Be careful!" Dan yells, perhaps a touch too loudly. 

Rowan sets the sack back down onto the metal surface of the table. The cups rattle, in the drawer. 

"I was just trying to help, I thought I could grind the beans while you finished up." 

"I'm back now," Dan says, moving to the sack and shooing Rowan out of the door, "I've got it. Just… go wait for people to turn up." 

Rowan exits, and Dan can hear him rattling around with chairs, if he wants to rearrange them Dan is going to leave him to it, it'll keep him out of trouble. 

Dan grinds the beans. Not too much, because he likes to do it fresh every night, but enough to cover what he thinks is going to be a hectic evening. The smell is familiar, though slightly different to how he remembers it from before. It's not as elegant, more bitter and heavy than it was when they had industrial machines to do the job and not just some guy making it up as he went along, but it's still coffee. 

Once it's done, Dan takes it outside and sets up the first cafetiere. 

His small dwelling is set on the edge of what can only be described as a salvage yard. There must have been a large collection of things here before but over the past couple of years more things have found their way here. Things they no longer need, things they used to rely on but that now only take up space. 

Dan rescued the cafetiere, and the pots, some of the units, tables, chairs, everything to set up this makeshift space. 

He often reflects that it looks like something a child playing make believe might construct to support their fantasy, but it's how he spends his nights, making coffee on a fire, serving it to those people joining in the same game of make believe they're all playing these days. 

Pretending things are still normal, that their entire lives haven't been ripped away. 

The first people arrive around twenty minutes later, and Dan pours them coffee. He'd offer something else, except that there isn't anything. He's toying with the idea of tea, especially now he's got the coffee crop working as it should. With Rowan's help he should be able to manage the extra work, but he isn't entirely sure how he'd go about getting everything to set it up. 

When he'd started the coffee, the choice hadn't been his. 

He was alone when he came here. He didn't think that he really deserved to be on the boat with everyone else, but he was still Clear, improbably, and he found himself at the dock anyway. Not that it had been easy to get there, but Dan doesn't really like to think about everything he did for even the smallest chance that he'd be able to leave. 

He almost didn't get on board, he wouldn't have, if it hadn't been for a pair of pretty blue eyes and the soft hand guiding him onto the ferry. He can still picture the exact shade of his irises, the swirl of blue, green and yellow, but he'd lost sight of them ten minutes into the journey. 

He must be around here, somewhere, the island isn't very big so there can't be many places for him to hide, but Dan hasn't seen him. 

Once he landed on the island there was already a system in place, people who'd been here before. They asked him what he'd done before and the only thing he had to offer was that he'd worked in a coffee shop. 

Not useful, as far as rebuilding a civilization went, not when half of it has died out and those that are left can't go out in the sun. 

A few weeks later the woman that was running things gave him his first coffee plant, set him up on the edge of the salvage yard, and what people have come to affectionately call 'Junkyard Coffee' was born. 

There is probably an actual coffee shop somewhere around, but the buildings that weren't damaged when the rioting first began, are used for other things these days. And so he's here, at Junk Coffee, with the plants and the job he didn't choose, but that he's come to be good at regardless.

He tries his best to make the actual coffee taste better than junk, but he isn't always successful. 

Dan pours out a cup for himself from one of the cafetieres. Without the use of electricity, or the technology to make instant coffee (not that he would want to anyway) salvaging the cafetieres was the only way he's come up with to make a decent cup of the stuff.

It's not perfect, a little more bitter than he'd have been used to back home, but it's all they have so people aren't that picky. 

He sells a little too, for people to take back to their homes. Not for money, because that concept has pretty much gone, but for other things. Trading services, or things that other people made. It's not a perfect system, and they haven't all learned to lean into altruism, to take care of each other a bit more than they would have done, but it works for the most part. 

Tonight is the same as normal, and Dan runs through this routine. He pours coffee, he chats with his regulars, he makes sure Rowan isn't completely destroying his set-up. 

That is, until around 3am. They have maybe an hour before they have to start packing away, better to be inside with the windows blacked out before the sunrise starts creeping on the horizon, but one more customer shows up for the last of the coffee. 

Dan is inside when he arrives. Rowan calls him out to deal with it because he's busy packing away the chairs. 

"I'm busy too," Dan says, passing Rowan in the doorway, "who is the boss here anyway?" 

Rowan gives him a cheeky laugh at the idea of Dan being anyone's boss, and continues cleaning up. 

Dan turns back to their customer and sees, with a jolt, a familiar blue-green-yellow swirl behind a pair of thick rimmed glasses. 

"How can I— oh." 

"Hi," the customer says, "I'm Phil. I heard there was… coffee?" 

Dan nods, dumbly, and picks up the final cafetiere where it's keeping warm near the fire.

Orange light flickers off the contours of Phil's face, the same kind of light Dan is used to, but it looks so much prettier when it's illuminating high cheekbones and faint crinkles in the corners of Phil's eyes. 

"I'm Dan. There's coffee," Dan says, pouring what remains in a mug, "such as it is." 

When he passes Phil the mug, their fingers overlap over rapidly heating ceramic. His skin is just as soft as Dan remembers.

Phil pulls the mug to his chest, cradling it as if he's desperate for the warmth. "Thank you. I… don't have anything to…" 

"It's fine," Dan says, "that's the last cup anyway, probably way too strong. The sun will be up soon, you'll be up all day if you drink it all, go easy." 

Phil nods, and takes a tentative sip, humming as he shallows, the corner of his mouth cooking. 

"You clearly haven't had coffee in a while." 

"What makes you so sure?" 

Rowan comes back from stacking the last of the chairs, wiping his hands on the top of his jeans. "All done, I'm going to head off." 

"Sure," Dan nods. 

Rowan picks up the lantern he uses to make his way home, lighting it from Dan's fire. The moonlight now dwindling, sky thrust into the darkest depths of the nighttime, on the precipice of dawn. He waves vaguely, stepping out of the circle of light cast by the flames, taking his own little ball of light with him, swinging at his side. Dan watches him go. 

"No one who has had decent coffee any time in recent memory would think that tastes good, Dan says. He rinses the cafetiere of the remaining grounds, washing it down for the next day. It feels good to reset it, put it all back to rights. The bookend of his routine now completed. 

Phil shifts his weight from one foot to the other, shoes crunching on the gravel, and seems reluctant to leave. 

"You don't have a lantern to get back?" Dan asks. 

"I'm fine," Phil says. 

"Alright." Dan looks him over from shoes to forehead, taking in his height, the way he hunches his shoulders and grips the cup between his hands, fingertips turning white around the nails. "You are welcome to stay for a bit." 

"Yeah?" 

"I mean yeah, I don't know how far you have to go, and I'll have to go back inside in about twenty minutes to double check the shades, but you can get warm if you like." 

Phil smiles at him warmly, little lines at the corners of his eyes thrown into relief under the flickering amber light. "Thanks." 

Dan takes the pot back inside, leaving Phil by the fire. He's sipping on the coffee and staring into the depths of the flames. They won't last too much longer, will die down to banked embers so he can light it again when he wakes. He's gotten used to the way it throws dancing shadows in a circle around the space. 

Back before the island, when the light first betrayed them and the electricity gave out, it had been terrifying. Scared of the dark and now bound to it, Dan could feel the peril that lay in the light and the dark, he'd spent the first few months going stir crazy without his own entertainment, looking over his shoulders for all the imagined horrors his untamed imagination could conjure. 

His journey to this place was fraught with things he doesn't want to think about, the kinds of things people are reduced to when they are desperate and afraid, but now he has the island, and his fire, and Junkyard Coffee. He's surviving. 

"Is that your house?" Phil asks when Dan comes back out. 

"Uh, yeah." 

"It's a bus." 

"It _was_ a bus," Dan corrects. Now the front is storage for the coffee stuff and the back is where I live." 

"Cool," Phil tells him. "You know, I didn't even know this place existed… the uh, coffee thing. My mum told me about it, I mean I asked her… I don't know why I didn't think to ask her before because obviously she would know. She was already here, she helped to set this place up for you. I think she said she gave you the first plant? But yeah, I asked her and she told me." 

Phil's words are all run together, like they are all climbing out of his mouth at the same time and he has to struggle to present them in the right order. Dan chuckles at him. 

"You needed to find coffee that bad?" 

"Oh," Phil says, shaking his head. "No, I asked her about you." 

"Me?" 

"Hm," Phil hums, and then pauses to drain the last of his coffee. "You probably don't… I remember you from the ferry ride over. I was helping to get people and you looked… interesting. I was interested." 

Dan sucks the barest edge of his bottom lip between his teeth and bites down. He remembers Phil, and is surprised to find that Phil remembers him. However, what surprises him most is that this feeling, this rising tension as Phil sweeps his eyes over Dan and Dan returns the gesture, is the same as it was in his old life. 

With the fire flashing colour over Phil's cheekbones they could be in a nightclub of old, Dan's beating heart could be the thud of bass or the swirl of alcohol in his veins. He would have flirted with Phil then, a stranger, someone who grabbed his interest. It could be easy like this, a pull to someone like an irresistible urge, something wicked and delicious. 

An owl hoots over head, the flapping sound of wings follows a dark shape across the inky sky and it pulls Dan from the fantasy of Phil before, and back to the very real Phil in front of him.

"Do you want to see the inside?" Dan asks, hooking a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the bus. 

"That would be… yeah." Phil says. 

Dan picks up his own lantern, lights it, and leads Phil up the steps into the bus. He'd ripped all the seats out when he converted it, but the door to the driver's section is still intact. Behind it, bags of dried coffee beans are stored, and the pots and cafetieres, everything Dan needs to set up. Behind that, the chairs for outside are stacked against one wall, on top of each other, a curtain pulled down over them to hide them from view. The tables stay outside, under a canopy in front of the bus. 

It occurs to him that he could leave it all out there but he likes the process of clearing it away, keeping it out of the weather.

Dan sets the lantern on the other side, on top of a shelving unit cobbled together from salvaged parts. On it sits a couple of books, some bits and pieces Dan owns, an extra pair of shoes. On the top there is space for the lantern and a chipped mug with a small scattering of the first beans he ever dried. They were bitter and awful, but he'd kept some anyway. Not to drink, just to remind himself how far he's come. 

Another box is next to it with Dan's clothes, water to wash with and drink from is stored in a plastic tub beside that, he even has a pump fitted to the top and a bowl as a makeshift sink so he doesn't have to go to the outside tap if he needs it during the day. 

The glow of the lamp casts an orange hue over everything, and Dan steps in further so that Phil can get a good look. 

"Wow," Phil says. Dan has set up a place to sit in the centre, several blankets draped across an armchair he'd had a devil of a job getting in through the door. This is where Phil makes his way, standing in front of the chair on the blue rug Dan had rescued, and looking around himself. 

All the windows are currently uncovered on both sides, but there are heavy drapes Dan can close, blackout blinds for during the day so that the sun can't get in. 

He does that now, shoring them up against the approaching daylight, blocking it out so they are safe. The bus falls to darkness, only the lantern casting shadows on the newly covered walls.

There are two steps up to a raised portion at the back, and another curtain is drawn across the entire width of the bus to separate it from the rest. 

"This is amazing," Phil says. "But why—" 

"Why live here?" 

"Yeah," Phil confirms, "there are places you could have stayed. When my mum gave you the plant and asked you to set up the shop I don't think she expected you to stay here." 

"No," Dan agrees. "I don't think she did. But this place is only here because people started dumping things they didn't want in an old car park, and I guess I liked the idea of giving it a purpose. And like… I used to have a city centre flat and all the amenities and something just felt right about doing it like this. Really doing it, you know?" 

"I live in my parents' house," Phil says, "or I do when I'm not on the mainland trying to—" 

"Trying to what?" Dan asks, because Phil has broken off what he was saying and is staring off into the light of the lantern again, like he did with the fire. 

"Help," Phil says, simply. "Like I helped you. But there's no one left, now. No one to bring over here. So I guess, yeah, I live with my parents now. That's why it took me so long to ask my mum about you." 

"Thank you," Dan says, "for helping." 

"Things could be a lot worse," Phil says, shaking himself. "I know I'm lucky."

Dan nods, and doesn't know what to say. They've both seen the horrors of what is left, there isn't a person on this island that hasn't, but there is little use in going over it all again. 

"You know what I miss most?" Phil asks, unexpectedly. "The internet."

"God," Dan sighs, "yeah. Me too." 

They share a wistful glance for a moment, and Phil sighs. Dan starts laughing and Phil joins in, and then they are both filled with the mirth that can only come from taking a step back to realise just how ridiculous things have become. How far they are away from their old lives and how absurd it is they are missing something like the internet of all things. 

"Come on," Dan says, when they calm down, "you haven't even seen the best part." 

He climbs the stairs to the back, pulling on the heavy curtain to reveal his makeshift bedroom. He's covered the entire space with mattresses so that it is basically one giant bed. He's piled it with pillows and blankets, cosy and plush and multicoloured. The windows are covered on all sides, the only light from the lantern behind them. 

"Wow," Phil says

"Pass me the lantern," Dan says. 

When Phil does, he lights the long thin stick he keeps handy and uses that to light the candles that line the edges of the mattress. There are maybe too many, but by the time he's finished everything is washed in a warm, soft glow.

"In the old days there would be fairy lights," Dan says.

"I can imagine it," Phil says. "But this is… beautiful."

He looks straight at Dan as he says it.

Dan wraps his hand over the edge of the curtain separating his bedroom from the rest of the space, still held back. Phil takes a step into his space, both on the edge of where the mattresses start, closer than they have been so far. Dan swallows, and blinks up as Phil's breath caresses his cheek. 

"You came looking for me?" Dan asks. 

"Yeah," Phil whispers, even though there is no need. "I was interested." 

"I… I remembered you too." 

"Yeah?" 

"Yeah," Dan confesses. "I was interested too." 

Dan lets go of the curtain when Phil kisses him. They are plunged into a darkness lit only by the candles and the sparks that fire behind Dan's eyes as he parts his mouth and draws Phil in. In the moment when they press against one another from knee to chest, Phil's hand seeking their way into Dan's hair, it is as if this tiny pocket of dark and firelight is all that exists, that all the bleak things beyond it are no longer important. 

Phil kisses in a way Dan can't remember being kissed. Not even before, not even when the world truly was uncomplicated, in one of those nightclubs. Phil kisses him like he's looking for something easy, something to remind him of how things felt before, and has found it. 

Dan pulls him closer, hands on his waist. His shirt is soft and worn, like all of Dan's clothes are, and it wrinkles under Dan's fingers where they curl a bit too tight. Dan doesn't want to let go, he wants to extend this moment, to feel the safe pleasant feeling that's creeping into his stomach for as long as he can. 

Phil sighs into his mouth, and Dan takes the opportunity to duck his head, mouthing over Phil's jaw to his neck. 

"This okay?" he asks, breathing hot over Phil's pulsepoint. 

"Yeah," Phil nods, chin dipping into Dan's hair, "Don't stop."

Dan trails his hands over Phil's waist, his stomach, sliding over his chest with the barest hint of pressure over a nipple that has Phil moaning even though it's only over his shirt. Then Dan pushes his thumb to the underside of Phil's chin and cips his head back so he can suck at the skin over his Adam's apple, down to his collarbone. 

"Take your shirt off," Dan says. 

"Yeah," Phil says, eyes wide and words slurring like he's punch-drunk from just a few kisses. Dan likes that he's so easy, that it isn't difficult to feel like he's making Phil feel good. Because Phil is making him feel good too. "Yours too." 

Dan grins, and discards his own shirt quickly, and then he gets his hands on Phil's bare chest and finds out the nipple thing works much better without the thin layer of cotton in the way. He dips his head, runs his tongue over the hardening nub and Phil pulls at him, urging him closer. 

"I wanna—" Phil says, words cut off with a gasp as Dan runs his hand over the flat plane of Phil's stomach, to the smattering of hair on his lower abdomen. It's soft, and Dan has missed the feel of a body that isn't his own, the touch of someone else's hands on his skin, and his hands on theirs. The button of Phil's trousers gives easily, and Dan pushes his hands under the waistband. 

"What do you wanna do?" Dan asks, his mind not quite catching up with his hands, acting on instinct. "Is this okay?" 

"Uhh, god, yeah," Phil says, "it's great, actually." 

Dan snorts and then pushes at Phil lightly, urging him down onto the bed. Phil goes, and Dan follows him down, pulling at Phil's clothes. Phil helps him out, toeing out of his shoes so that Dan can pull both his trousers and his underwear off, and then Phil's hands are on Dan's belt while Dan drinks in the sight of him, naked and exposed. 

He's pale, so beautifully pale, dotted with constellations of freckles on his shoulders, neck, one delicate dot on his hip. Dan wants to map them all, push his tongue to each mark and take his time. Maybe there will be time for that later, for now Dan is driven by something baser, a need to connect with someone, take and give, quick and eager. 

Phil gets Dan's clothes off too, stumbling because Dan hasn't stepped out of his shoes but he does that now, letting Phil have his fill of looking at Dan, too. Dan is tall, and he's equally gangly, but he doesn't feel like it suits him as much as Phil. He's awkward, and clumsy, like he doesn't belong inside his skin. But Phil runs a hand up his bare thigh once Dan is free of his clothes and says "you're beautiful," and Dan blushes. 

Dan covers Phil's mouth with his own again, pressing their bodies together, his length hard and heavy, aching as it pushes against Phil's hip. Phil whines in his throat and Dan is neither surprised nor upset about the fact that this is going to be over all too quickly. Something tells him it won't be the last time for either of them. 

"What did you want to do?" Dan asks him again, because he never answered the first time. 

"I don't know," Phil confesses, "Everything." 

He laughs, and Dan joins in, a honey-warm sound in their private den, bouncing back off covered walls, dampened by it but swelling in the space it's allowed. Something blooms in Dan's chest, and he kisses Phil again, chasing it. 

"Can I suck you?" he asks. 

It makes him feel good to be so bold about it, and Phil likes it too if the way his cheeks flush and his cock twitches it anything to go by. 

"Yes, please," Phil says. 

"So polite." Dan grins through the teasing, and slithers down the massive bed to settle between Phil's thighs. 

Phil is long here too, though not as pale. His cock is flushed pink, a thick vein running up the underside and Dan wastes no time running his tongue along it. Phil bucks, not expecting the sudden contact, and Dan chuckles, laying a hand on his hip to steady him. 

Phil watches him with wide eyes and Dan breathes hot over his cock. It twitches, and Dan wraps his fingers around it, silky skin over hard arousal and Phil puts his thumb on Dan's lip. 

"I—" Phil says. 

"Shh," Dan says, "stop talking now." 

Phil nods, retracts his hand, and lets Dan do what he wants.

He takes Phil into his mouth, stretching his jaw wide to slide as far as he dares. It's been quite a while since he's done this, but he still remembers how. He knows he likes his mouth being full, and enjoys the noises Phil is making in response. The slide is easy at first, adjusting the angle, swirling his tongue, he bobs his head and gets used to the shape of him, to the way he tastes and the musky scent of his skin. 

He uses his hand to cover what his mouth can't, shifting his fist with each movement of his head so that they are in sync, and Phil's head hits the mattress with a dull thud, no longer able to keep watching. 

"Shit," Phil swears. It sounds good, all gruff and deep. Dan likes it. "You're so good at that." 

Dan shivers under the praise, it's nice to know that he's still got the knack. He pushes himself down a little further, uncurling his first two fingers from the grip he has on the base of Phil's length so slide his mouth further along the shaft. The head bumps against the back of his throat and he breathes through it, moving his head in shallow thrusts and moving his tongue. 

Phil swears again and puts his hand in Dan's hair. "I'm— what are you even— wow." 

Dan swallows around him, and Phil groans loudly. Dan wishes he could keep doing it, but he has to come up for air, to back off a bit and keep moving his hand in the rhythm he's created. 

"I'm going to come soon," Phil warns him. 

Dan looks up through his lashes. Phil probably meant it as a warning to pull off, but Dan isn't going to. He swallows Phil down and keeps moving his mouth over him. 

Phil's cock twitches, his hips thrusting into Dan's mouth. Dan lets him, keeping up the suction and the hot, wet place for him to put it, but he allows Phil to set the pace. He alternates between long thrust into the full shape of Dan's mouth, to pushing the head of his cock through the seal of his lips over and over, and all too soon his thighs go tense, his balls draw up, and Dan pushes himself down as Phil's cock pulses on his tongue. 

Dan swallows down Phil's release and then pulls off, scrabbling to get a hand around his own cock because the noises Phil made when he came were enough to almost set him off. He just needs a little more, just a few short strokes and he can get himself there. 

"Dan," Phil says, interrupting him. 

"Yeah?"

Phil's hair is a mess, and he looks hungry. 

"Come here." 

"I won't last long," Dan warns him, but he straddling Phil anyway, walking his knees up the bed until he is positioned over Phil's chest and Phil has lifted his head to take Dan's cock when he feeds it to him. 

It feels like too much all at once. Phil's mouth is eager, a bit sloppy in all the best ways, wet and hot and Dan has to close his eyes and steady himself. 

"Fuck," Dan says, "Fuck that's—" 

He takes hold of Phil's hair, looking down to watch his cock slide in and out of Phi's plush, pink lips. Phil blinks up at him with those blue-green-yellow eyes, the glint of the orange flames reflects in the lens of his glasses, and Dan is gone. 

"I'm—" is all he manages, before he's coming. 

Phil doesn't stop. He swallows Dan down and Dan wants to tell him he doesn't have to just because Dan did, and he worries that he's being rude in assuming, but the thought is over quickly, wiped away as his mind blanks white. He shudders through it, hips undulating the tiniest amount, and then slumps forward when it's over. Phil drops his head back to the bed, lips swollen and red, hair wild, eyes blissed out, and Dan wonders if he looks the same. 

After, once they have righted themselves and dragged enough energy into their limbs to move, they lie on the soft cushions, turned in toward each other, noses close. Phil's hand skates up Dan's bare side with just his fingertips, tickling lightly, and Dan has to repress the urge to shiver. 

Candlelight shifts around them, bouncing off the curves and dips of Phil's body, making him shine in the darkness. 

"I miss this from before," Phil says. 

"What? Sex?" 

"Well, yes," Phil smiles, "but also just… being interested in someone. Not just feeling like I've lost things over and over but that I might be able to… I dunno, find something, too."

Dan hides his smile, and the giddy feeling that comes with the prospect of being something Phil has found, in the corner of his pillow. 

"It's easy to get stuck on the things you miss," Dan says "but at least you have family." 

"God, yeah, I know," Phil says, tone apologetic, "I know I'm lucky. I'm sorry." 

"That isn't what I meant," Dan says, swiping his thumb at the corner of Phil's mouth where it's downturned."You're allowed to miss things, it's all relative."

"Just the little things," Phil sighs. "I miss all the tiny things like sunsets on a balcony, or the way the birds chirp in the morning. There's a tree outside my bedroom window and sometimes I stay up and listen to them through the blackout blind. I haven't seen them in so long and I didn't realise that was a thing that I'd miss." 

Dan considers him for a moment. Phil is nice, and Dan likes him, so he runs his hand down the side of Phil's neck and says, "do you want to see something?" 

"Okay." 

Dan reaches for the black cloth draped in an arc across the ceiling. It makes it so that the bed is covered in black from every side, dotted with the amber light of the candles like flickering stars in a night sky. As he pulls, the curtain starts to draw away from the sunroof above them. 

"Dan!" Phil yells, shooting out to grip his wrist and stop him, "the sun will be coming up." 

"Trust me," Dan says, easing his hand free with gentle fingers on Phil's and nodding encouragingly. 

Phil flinches as the curtain draws back, and a dull, wash of light floods the space. Above them, a square of glass lets in the rising day beyond, a sky no longer deep black but a muted, heathered grey working towards blue. 

"It's UV filtered glass," Dan says, "I found it in the yard. The sun can't… it doesn't get in. I don't do it for too long but…" 

Phil's head is tipped upward, eyes wide. They are even more blue in this light, the swirl of all those colours brighter and more perplexing than Dan could have imagined. Phil looks up at the sky, and Dan looks at him. 

"Dan, it's—" 

"Yeah." 

They fall quiet, and outside the sounds of birds chirping can be heard. It's a melodic sound, songbirds waking up with a tune, Dan has laid here so many times, lonely and with his head full of determination to make this work, an ache for a life he'd left behind. The sound of those birds has reminded him that there is still something out there, something waiting for them on the other side of it all. The days go on, even when they can't see them.

There is the flutter of wings, and instead of the screeching owl from before, a small delicate bird hops on the glass above them. Phil's fingers wind themselves around Dan's and he squeezes. The light glints across the glassy tears forming in Phil's eyes and Dan diverts his gaze, pretends not to notice. 

"I—" Phil says, but doesn't continue. 

They look for a few more minutes, until the bird loses interest and flies away, and then Dan covers the window back up, just in case. 

"I've thought about putting some of the seeds from the beans up there," Dan says, "to lure them in." 

"You should," Phil says. 

Dan lays down on his back, hand behind his head. He's still naked, and so is Phil, but it doesn't matter because the candles are warming the space, cocooned as they are in the cave Dan has made himself, and they have nothing to be ashamed about.

Phil rolls over, pinning Dan's body to the mattress and kissing him. Dan lets it happen, angling his head to kiss back just as enthusiastically. 

"Thank you," Phil says, as they part, "for showing me." 

Dan runs a hand down the centre of Phil's spine and Phil presses his hips forward, obviously hard again.

Dan cocks an eyebrow, "you are grateful." 

"Yes," Phil laughs. "I am. That okay?" 

"We've got all day," Dan says, "not like you can go anywhere." 

"Right," Phil says, his teeth on Dan's neck and Dan throws his head back, already breathing heavily, "and for once, I don't mind that at all."


End file.
